


Atrocity Exhibition

by dimtraces



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dehumanization, Drabble Collection, Gen, POV Outsider, canon compliant means 'angst' where savage is concerned tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 08:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13383891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimtraces/pseuds/dimtraces
Summary: Snapshots of the life and death of Savage Opress, from seventeen different angles. Drabble collection.





	Atrocity Exhibition

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** roughly as explicit and sad as the TV show. Dehumanization, abuse, violence, murder, implications of rape, gender-based hatred, body horror.

**I.**

**The body lies empty in the plaza,** half-naked and with twin charred holes in his chest that must’ve done him in and already spotted with purplish death-bruising, and yet, he looks oddly peaceful. She kneels in respect: there is no doubt in her mind that Savage died to protect her Mand’Alor. He tried to, just like the soldiers that Death Watch has already found in the throne room, and just like them, he fell victim to the silent menace none could defend against.

“I’m still alive, but you are dead,” Rook Kast whispers. “I remember you. We will find Maul.”

**II.**

**Her baby is a boy**. Kycina had prayed for a girl, not for the sake of his sire, waiting captive in her rooms and soon to be killed for the deficiency in his seed, in the way of her mother and all women before her; but for herself. The boy, Savage, she will give into the care of his tribe, and when he has grown and been taken she will close her ears and weep his death. A girl, she’d have seen grow up, would have delighted in her every move.

A girl, she would have cradled to her chest.

**III.**

**An obstacle** , that’s all he is, or—an opportunity. Maul loves him. That long-discarded wretched failure of a traitorous apprentice has thrown in his lot with another of his species, a dumb brute with even less promise than Maul ever had, and he _loves_ him. This is delightful. Sidious makes sure that Maul is fully conscious again by the time he slaughters the animal. He allows them their little goodbyes. It would take long to find physical pain that Maul hasn’t yet suffered, and he is well-acquainted with emotional abuse, but this: this loss, it was worth flying out for.

**IV.**

**Always a step behind Maul** , never in front. A trusted lieutenant, because he’s not the leader, not by a long shot, not with the shorter man’s arrogance in play. A shield, instead. And: a loved one. Pre Viszla sees it, in the way Savage stops the knife aimed at Maul, and in the total lack of flinch. Never a doubt he’ll intervene, and it’s mutual, certainly, what with Maul’s easily exploitable concern after the rescue.

That’s why, despite certain security concerns, he gives the order to lock both brothers inside the same cell. This is Mandalore, and family is honored.

**V.**

**The young nightbrother has grown strong** , Brother Viscus notes with silent helpless pride. On the field, Savage is straining muscles and cocky grins and there’s nary a yelp when the lance of his training partner strikes true, and then he wrestles the other teenager down and helps him up again. The boy is the very picture of a son of their tribe, powerful and kind with children and someday, Viscus thinks with a rend in his hearts he cannot seem to rid himself of, someday he will make a fine mate for the Sister who wins him as Her prize.

**VI.**

**This new acolyte was a mistake** , Darth Tyranus decides. He’d visited the Nightsister tribe in the belief that one of their males had been powerful and cunning enough to murder his own former Padawan, and he’d gone there despite the pain and disgust he feels whenever he thinks of the now-dead Darth Maul’s deed. He found: utter disappointment. Ignorance. Imbecility. Abjection. _This_ is the kind of creature that dared best Qui-Gon?

On the floor, Opress whines and curls and begs for his brother—for the murderous beast that once enticed Tyranus—and so he gifts him another lesson of pain.

**VII.**

**The enemy rushes onto the battlefield** , cutting off that brother’s arm in a bright spray of arterial blood and choking this brother with massive claws, and right then Spotlight knows he was wrong. He’s been wondering, see: maybe they’re not so different, him and the Separatist flesh grunts. They look scared, before he shoots them, and Spotlight himself certainly wouldn’t be fighting this war if he wasn’t made to do it. No-one gets anything out of war but the civvies. But the beast has this wild look, like he’s karking enjoying it, and Spotlight was wrong. This is the end.

**VIII.**

**Traitor, the droids name the Sith beast** , and they shoot it instead of taking aim at him or Obi-Wan. Frankly, that’s fine by Anakin. He’d like to get a good chop in himself— _somewhere, he is still that nine-year-old kid huddled on Naboo who was told that Qui-Gon Jinn was never coming back, that he’d been slain by the Sith, a kid who wanted to beg_ Who’ll be my Master now _and couldn’t_ —Anakin wouldn’t mind taking on Dooku’s animal, but there’s no reason to risk entering the droid’s blaster-hail. Opress roars out a shockwave and flees. Next time, then.

**IX.**

**It’s terrifying, even with his big brother beside him,** and Feral can’t imagine how much worse his first trial would be, alone. Although. He shivers: being killed by the pale Woman, or accidentally by one of the other unlucky sods beside them, that’s bad (and it would already have happened, if Savage hadn’t interceded), but compared to… to being taken—

(Savage puts himself between another blow and Feral’s body)

—compared to being taken by the Sister, death is fine, and so’s being struck lame; but Savage will never let Feral get hurt. How are they gonna get out of this?

**X.**

**The Sith looms.** Angry growls and quick strikes and then— _he shouldn’t be this strong_ , Adi Gallia thinks frantically, shouldn’t be able to overpower her this easily when she is a General and a Jedi Master and a Member of the High Council to boot, and it gives her terror for the future. He shouldn’t, because the Jedi triumphed and routed the Sith once before and hunted them to extinction; but they have returned, and the force favors them. Opress smacks her against the ship and spears her when she falls, and there is no death. There is the force.

**XI.**

**What a moron**. Looks strong—looks like mounds of juicy juicy meat, more like—but with all those nice muscles there’s not much space left over for brain, it appears, because, after that shitty strangling, the offworlder’s actually following Morley meekly to his doom. If he didn’t look as delicious or was a little less of a humorless prick, and what kind of catchphrase is _Where is my brother?_ anyway… if Morley wasn’t so hungry, then he might even find it in him to feel bad for the ugly meathead. As it is: maybe Master will leave Morley some entrails.

**XII.**

**He’s gonna kill her**. This dude is actually going to kriffing kill her, not in a pervert way but in broad daylight, in the middle of the restaurant, grabbing her and holding her up and strangling her and everyone’s screaming, and Mikjoo was just going to look at his weird glowing amulet, that’s all. She was gonna make conversation, with a man who looked slightly sad and very lost and like he’d potentially give decent tips.

It’s not murder, in the end; he throws her to the floor and runs off, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a total psycho.

**XIII.**

**Her creature drags himself to the table** , drags himself home, bruised, a failure and: still alive. It’s a testament to Talzin’s craft that the bespelled nightbrother was able to return, and the result of her own shortcomings that Dooku yet lives. No matter. When young Asajj returns, another path to her vengeance shall be found. As for Savage Opress… in the crystal, Talzin sees her Maul, once stolen by Sidious and finally located, and there’s none more suited to fetching the boy than this durable, obedient tool. She speaks comfort and helps him up. There is further use for him.

**XIV.**

**Her mate** —or he would have been, if this was a normal coupling—he washes himself in the sink of the sister’s house where Asajj is staying, for this step in the grand plan of her revenge against her former Master. Trembles wrack his glistening bruised body, and she ignores them, according to her wishes and—she is sure—also his own.

Shock laces through him when instead of a kiss, she presents him to Mother Talzin, that and naked relief; but when he stands after the ritual, what’s left is not a mate. Not a nightbrother. Only—an instrument.

**XV.**

**The foolish apprentice looks up from underneath Maul’s clawed foot** , all thoughts of brazen challenge forgotten. There is no pain, not yet. This should be cause for further correction, Maul remembers, should result in screams, writhing and terror, but— _a face, a familiar sort of face if Maul remembered his own and more still now he doesn’t, leads him from out his trash cave and into the light. A low voice rings through the nightmare. A hand offers meat._ _Safety._ The apprentice looks up. The brother loves, despite everything.

Maul extends his hand. He doesn’t care to interrogate the instinct.

**XVI.**

**Two brothers and a smoldering pile of corpses** , that’s what Obi-Wan finds on Raydonia. Violence, senseless and vile, evident in this carnage and in the shaping of its perpetrators, for he’s visited their village, knows of enslavement and degradation and forced breeding, and knows that none should ever arise from such filth as exists on Dathomir and feel any compassion. Both were doomed from the moment of their birth.

He ignites his lightsaber and faces them. Unlikely though it is, he prays: for victory, but more still, for the chance to extinguish this cycle of violence with both their lives.

**XVII.**

He wrings his hands around Feral’s neck, or he doesn’t: he is _watching_ his fingers kill, is looking down at them, and they’re not even the right size. A plea, silent, disembodied: they don’t look like his fingers. It’s only the perspective that does it, making them out to be his own body; that, and the self-aimed revulsion. _Stop._ They don’t, of course. His hands don’t belong to him anymore.

Afterwards, he won’t remember the Mother’s intrusion. He will see nothing but his own flesh, by his own will, killing his own brother.

Afterwards, Savage will only see: **a monster**.

**Author's Note:**

> These are pretty much all the people Savage interacts with on-screen in canon (plus Kycina and Rook Kast), apart from King Katuunko of Toydaria and a few droids and the Jedi he kills on Devaron and that poor freighter-driver from Lotho Minor and so on, but there’s only so many ways you can spin, “JESUS CHRIST HE JUST KILLED ME”. Writing from someone’s perspective without affording them the dignity of a name is super weird, so here’s Mikjoo the random waitress from that diner from Brothers and Spotlight the clone trooper, poor dude.
> 
> Rook Kast's benediction is (most of) _Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum_ from the Mando'a Database but her POV is probably completely in Mando'a anyway so why just have that one phrase
> 
> Title’s from the [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqeqAQ1ILI) by Joy Division. If I made a Savage playlist it would be the first song on it tbh. _for entertainment they watch his body twist / behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'_
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this super niche piece of writing and thanks for reading!


End file.
